The photograph shows a busy tram stop in West Berlin’s everyday life in 1955: streetcar No. 576 on line 6, bound for Neukölln, stops while passengers board. In the background, the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church loom into the frame — a central memorial to wartime destruction, deliberately left standing in the western part of the city as a reminder. A Litfaßsäule (advertising column) with commercial notices and the signs of neighboring shops point to the resurgent consumer activity of the emerging economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). The image combines two characteristic contrasts of Berlin around 1955: the normalizing everyday traffic of a modern metropolis and the still-omnipresent wounds of World War II. As a symbol of reconstruction and civilian life in the western part of the divided city, the scene stands exemplary for the simultaneity of destruction and new beginning.